“It was reasonably sudden. He was always working very hard. Company president, you know. He retired a few years ago, and when I refused the position, it went to my brother. My dad still went to the office every day though. He valued work more than anything.

“He’d had a cold for a few days, but then one evening at the office, he couldn’t breathe and collapsed. Brother and staff called an ambulance and he was taken in to the hospital. Pneumonia, they decided, and quite bad. They thought he was going to die that night.

“But he didn’t, and though he was unconscious for a couple days, when he woke up, he said he was feeling better. The doctors said they might even let him go home by the end of the week. They wanted to do some more tests though.

“That’s when they found the cancer. Lung cancer, quite far along. Metastasized to his liver and colon. They gave him three weeks to live.

“He lasted 10 days. Died on the second of April, too late to save us the cost of paying his residence tax for another year. Oh well.

“This week, as a family, we finally decided to go to Dad’s house and start cleaning it up. We’ve just been so busy with all of the other things related to a death… there’s been no time until now. I took a couple days off work so we could go to it.

“What? No, my parents didn’t live together. They weren’t divorced, no, not even really separated. They just lived in different houses. My mom in one house, my brother in a rented house between them, and my father in the house I grew up in. My parents got along, and loved each other but… Dad was a bit of an odd duck. Work was more important than anything to him, and I guess they just got along better living in separate houses.

“Anyway, my brother, as I said, doesn’t own his house, he’s renting. Mom and I suggested that he could take Dad’s house, and move in, and it would be good. That’s part of why we went this week, to clean up the place so he could start moving in.

“We got to the house in the early morning. No one has been there since Dad left in mid-March. There’s a big tree in the back garden, and the grass has grown tall and wild. Nature is amazing.

“Somehow though, it was all a little spooky. It felt like a ghost mansion. I guess, in some ways, there are ghosts there…

“My brother unlocked the door with a satisfying clunk, and we went in. The house had been closed since March, so it was cool and a little damp inside. The power was off, so it was also very dark. All the blinds and curtains were shut, and even if they weren’t, the grass was so tall it would still be dimly lit. The spooky ghost mansion feeling wasn’t going away. Even my brother commented on how weird it was.

“As we were milling about in the entranceway, trying to decide where to go or what to do first, I noticed an old black and white snapshot pinned to the wall. There was a young man that I recognized as my dad, and a really chubby lady.

“ ‘Mom, who is this with Dad?!’ I asked. I’d never seen this chubby woman before. Oh no, did Dad have a mistress? It would explain the separate living.

“My mom laughed. ‘Silly thing, that’s me! That’s taken on our honeymoon! I didn’t know he still had that picture.’ I didn’t know she’d been chubby when she was younger. I’ve always known her as a skinny wisp of a lady.

“We had brought flashlights, and now turned them on. Shining mine down the hallway, I noticed that the floor had collapsed in two places. The wood flooring had just buckled. How did that happen? And when? Why didn’t Dad get it fixed?

“The first room on the left was the sitting room. The sofas and cushions were the same ones I’d grown up with — nothing had been replaced in all these years. I guess it must have been 25 years since I was last in here. No good reason…

“Hmm? No, I saw my dad often. But as a family, we never came here. My mom, brother, and dad always got together at company headquarters when we wanted to see each other, or we’d go to a restaurant. We never came here. I sometimes visit my mom at her house, but she and my brother didn’t come here, and my dad and my brother don’t go to my mom’s house. Now that I think about it, that’s really weird, isn’t it?

“It’s not that I didn’t love my dad. I did. He was… he was strange though. Work meant everything to him. When I was ready to go to university, he wanted me to take a management course, so I could take over as president of the company one day. But I didn’t really have any interest in that — my first love has always been science. I’m content with being a regular employee instead of a powerful company president.

“My brother, on the other hand, never wanted to be a regular employee. It didn’t appeal to him. So we agreed that I’d go and study science, and he could take management so he could be president when Dad retired. It was a good arrangement, and we all mostly got what we wanted.

“It wouldn’t have worked anyway, you know, me as a manager in Dad’s company. We never saw eye to eye on anything, especially management style. Besides all that, Dad, Mom, and my brother, they’re all workaholics. They wake up, they go to the company, they work until midnight, they go home, they think about work, they sleep a few hours, and then continue. The company is everything to them.

“I much prefer to be able to sleep a little late on weekends, have a leisurely breakfast, go to a class and learn something with an interesting teacher, and then go for a walk on the beach with my husband and our dog. After lunch, I can read books, and just relax. If I had joined the company, I wouldn’t be able to do that.

“The next room along was the traditional tatami room. To get to it, we had to hop over the holes in the wood flooring. Here, too, we had a surprise as the tatami had rotted and collapsed. I don’t know why Dad didn’t take better care of the house. I guess, though, he only ever slept here. He woke up, ate breakfast at the office, stopped at the sento on the way home, ate dinner out, and then slept. But still, think of others! But I guess, since he was at work all day, the downstairs doors and windows were never opened, and the trees kept a breeze from circulating down here. That must be part of the problem.

“In the tatami room, there’s a tokonoma. I remember, as a child, there was always a flower arrangement and some beautiful calligraphy in there. Now, there was just a big photograph of Mom. In the tokonoma! He really did love her. I don’t know why they didn’t live together, but Dad was a bit strange.

“He had a hobby, you know. He could fix watches. Wristwatches, pocket watches, table clocks. He could fix them all. He used to go to sales and buy broken clocks and fix them up, then give them away as presents.

“We carried on to the kitchen. In there, there was a little bit of garbage that had gone a little smelly, but as Dad never ate at home, it wasn’t much.

“We were surprised that, on the kitchen table, there was a photo of our dog, Koro, and a box of doggy treats. I guess Dad loved Koro, too, though I never would have guessed it growing up. Koro died in 1980, as well, so the doggy treats were a bit of a mystery.

“The damage downstairs that would need to be fixed if my brother were to move in was extensive, but we could afford it, so it’s not a huge deal. But then we went upstairs.

“It became clear that, upstairs, the roof was leaking in about 20 places. The contractor we got in later in the week said no significant damage had been done, but to fix the roof was going to much more expensive. Then there’s also the problem with the mold…

“I went into my old bedroom. Like I said, I haven’t been in the house since the early 90s, and I don’t think I’ve been in my room since before that. One corner was a little wet from a roof leak, but only the bed was over there. My bookshelves and desk were still in good condition, though very dusty.

“Nostalgia got the better of me and I went poking through the things that belonged to a me from another time. There were some rolled up, thick papers, tied with ribbon stacked in the bookshelf. I pulled one out, blew off the dust, and unrolled it.

“A certificate that I had passed level four of the English Proficiency Test, dated 1978. Why is this still here? What is even happening? The cold and damp started to make me feel uncomfortable, and so I made my way back downstairs. My mom and brother were ready to go.

“There was one more thing I had to do, though. I went back to the kitchen and took the box of doggy treats. I had a shovel in the cat, just in case we needed it for something, so I went and got that, too. I vaguely remembered where in the yard we’d buried Koro, even though that’s 35 years ago, now. I dug a small hole there, and put in some doggy treats for him, and sealed it up.

“I don’t know why, but I felt it was the right thing to do. I felt better having done it. I think Dad may have been happy I’d done it, too.

“Later in the week, we had the contractor round. To make the place fit to live in again, it would be cheaper to pull it down and build a new house, almost. This house has had a good run, it’s 45 years old. But still, what a waste. If only Dad had taken better care of it. Or himself. Or his relationships.

“But while we could, the three of us, afford minor repairs, we can’t afford to build a new house on the land for my brother to live in. He doesn’t have much money to throw at the project anyway. He’s not really management material, in the end. My mom is still CEO, and though she’s nearly 80 and wants to retire, she doesn’t trust my brother to run the company alone. She often bypasses my brother to run things directly, because he’s just not good at it.

“Of course, all the employees know me, too, and whenever I’m around the company headquarters, they’ll pull me aside and say, ‘Sister, come on back to the company, we need your help, things aren’t going well.’ And I feel for them, but walks on the beach and reading books are more important to me.

“So, we don’t know what we’re going to do about the house we grew up in that our weird Dad let decay like this. I don’t know what my mom will do about the company. I don’t know what my brother will do about a house of his own. I don’t know what I’ll do at all.

“But seeing the house, and the way Dad was living at the end, and the pictures of Mom and Koro, I’ve remembered, after a long time, that even though we never saw eye to eye, I really loved my dad.

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So, there’s this thing. Rotating curation Twitter accounts, they’re called. Basically, a certain group is represented by one member on twitter for a week, and you get an insight into that group through that member. The original was @sweden, I think, where one Swede a week posts about daily stuff and answers questions and whathaveyou. @PeopleofCanada is one for Canada.

And criminy jibbit, I’ve been selected to be that Canadian for this week.

It’s… I think I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that it’s kind of a strange week to be curating that account. In light of what’s happened in Canada over the past week or so, it will be… interesting. And difficult, because I’m on the other side of the planet.

But I suppose that’s part of what @PeopleofCanada is about. Showing real Canadians, in all shapes and colours and places, even if they may be a bit of un canadien errant.

So, I hope you’ll follow me and tell your friends. And hopefully I won’t cause any international incidents.